Rolf ElberfeldI

Yoko Arisaka (Hg.)

Kitaro Nishida
in der Philosophie
des 20. Jahrhunderts
Mit Texten Nishidas
in deutscher Obersetzung

Verlag Karl Alber Freiburg/Miinchen

 Bret W. DAVIS

Ethicaland ReligiousAlterity:
Nishidaafter Levinas

In and after his pivotal essay published in 1932, I and Thou (Watashi to
nanji 5fb.t 5'.k),
1 NISHIDA Kitaro, Japan's foremost modern philosopher,
anticipated many of Emmanuel Levinas's concerns with respecting the
x:adicalalterity of other persons. 2 Both Nishida and Levinas attempt to
think a relation between self and other that does not reduce the alterity
of the other to the sameness of the self. The other always exceeds his or
her appearance in the horizon of the self, which not only means he or
she is different than the self, but also that he or she cannot be reduced to
his or her relation to the self. The alterity of the other is thus »absolute «
in the sense that he or she is »absolved« from his or her relation to the
self.
At the same time, both Nishida and Levinas grapple with the en-
igma of how there can nevertheless be a relation between absolute
others, a »relation without relation« as Levinas paradoxically puts it. 3

1
NKZ I, 6:341-427 . For abbreviations which are not explained in the footnotes see the
list at the beginning of this volume . Translations from Japanese are my own .
2 For a more comprehensive treatm~nt of Nishida 's thought on the relation between self

and other, see my »Das Innerste zuau'Berst: Nishida und die Revolution der Jch-Du-
Beziehung«, translated by Ruben Pfizenmaier, Eberhard Ortland and Rolf Elberfeld, in:
Allgemeine Zeitschrift fur Philosophie36:3 (2011): pp. 281-312. For a mor e in depth
treatment of Nishida's philosophy of religion, see my »Nijii naru ,zettai no ta e no nai-
zai-teki choetsu, : Nishida no shiikyo tetsugaku ni okeru tasha-ron « (Twofold ,Immanent
Transcenden ce to the Absolute Other<: Alterity in Nishida's Philosophy of Religion], in:
Nihontetsugalrnshikenkyu (Studies in Japanese Philosophy] 9 (2012): pp. 102-34 .
3
Tel, 52/Tal , 80. Wor.ks by Levinas are cited according to the following abbreviat ions.
AE = Autrem ent qu'etre 0 11 au-de/ti de /'essence (Dordrecht: 1978). BPW = BasicPhilo-
sophical Writings, edited by Adriaan T. Peperzak, Simon Critchley, and Robert Bernas-
coni (Bloomington: 1996). DF= Difficult Freedom: Essays on Judaism, translated by
Sean Hand (Baltimore: 1990). DL = Difficileliberte:Essaissur le judai'sme (Paris: 1976).
LK = Emmanuel Levinas and Richard Kearney, »Dialogue with Emmanuel Levinas«, in:
Face to Facewith Levinas, edited by Richard A. Cohen (Albany: 1986). OB = Otherwise
than Being or Beyond Essence,translated by Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: 1998). Tel=

N!-<~I (':'-heNishida-Gesamtausgabe) 3/3

N1sh1da Kuan'> Gesamtausgabe (Nishida Kitaro zenshu) 19 B·· d
r h g. V. v•~S h'IS h 1ge
' , an e,
ABEet al., Iwanami-Shoten: Tokyo 1978-80.
w:~i&~±~J ± 19~, ~1H~~'tt!!.fo.i, %5i:f/6, 1978-80
Bret W. Davis

For Levinas, such a relation can only be thought in terms of the Biblical
conception of »fraternity «. While Nishida is sympathetic to such Bibli-
cal ideas, his own philosophy of religion is deeply informed by East
Asian Mahayana Buddhism. Whereas Levinas's God is an »absolute
exteriority « who is »not of this world«, who »does not encompass « hu-
man beings, who is approached through »metaphysical desire«, and
who issues ethical commands and judges from »on High «, Nishida 's
God or Buddha is a kenotic (i.e., self-emptying) source of love and crea-
tivity that is approached through »immanent transcenden ce« (naizaite-
ki choetsu ~ ;(E{r;J ilf~), and a panentheistic 4 »place of absolute noth-
ingness « (zettai mu no basho tJ-.J-$.l{-0)3-if}r) in which self and other
dialectically interact .
This essay stages a mutually appreciative as well as mutually criti-
cal dialogue between Nishida's and Levinas's accounts of the interperso -
nal relation, and shows how their divergences stem from their different
philosophies of religion. 5 Levinas is certainly one of the most significant
ethical thinkers of the twentieth century; he is arguably the most radical
and provocative. The religious dimension of his thought, moreover, has
revived an appr eciation for the Biblical contribution s to ethical thought

Tota lite et infini : Essai sur l'exteriorite (Dordrecht: 1971). Tal = Totality and Infinity: An
Essay on Exteriority, translated by Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburg h: 1979) .
• Panentheism (literally »all-in-God«) is to be distinguished both from dualistic theism,
which maintains the separateness of God and the world , as well as from pantheism, which
completely identifies God and the world .
5
To my know ledge, a sustained comparison of Nishida with Levinas has previously been
undertaken only in two articles, both in Japanese: FUJITAMasakatsu, Nishida Kitaro no
shisaku-sekai [The World of Nishida Kitaro's Thought] , (Tokyo 2011), chapter 5; and
KuMAGAJ Seiichiro, »Nishida-tetsugaku ni okeru tasha no kakuzessei: Levinasu no hika-
ku ni oite« [The Separateness of the Other in Nishida's Philosophy: In Comparison with
Levinas], in: Nihon n o tets ugaku [Japanese Philosoph y] 6 (2005): pp. 79-92. Both arti cles
argue that Nishida's mature conception of the interpersonal relation is similar to, though
less radical than, that of Levinas. Yet neith er examines the fundamentally different phi-
losophies of religion that underlie Nishida's and Levinas's accounts of the interp ersonal
relation. It is important to point out that neither Nishida nor Levinas understands his
thought to be based on a preconceived notion of God or Buddha. Nishida would agree
with Levinas's statement, »It is God that I can define through human relation s and not
the inverse « (BPW 29), even if he would take a wider range of human experience as his
starting point. Nevertheless, both philosophers find it necessary to speak of God or Bud-
dha in the course of examining human experience, and, as we shall see, the philosophical
ramifications of the religious tradition or (in the case of Nishida) traditions in which they
stand are reflected in their conceptions of human experience.

314
 Ethical and Religious Alterity : Nishida after Levinas

in the West. Unfortunately, Levinas never read Nishida; indeed, for all
his attention to the alterity of other persons, Levinas showed scarcely
any interest in, and at times even showed disdain for, other religious
and philosophical traditions. Yet even if he did not take these other
traditions seriously, those who do should still pay serious attention to
his thought. By questioning Nishida on Levinas's behalf, and by re-
sponding to Levinas on behalf of Nishida, this essay takes up the chal-
lenge of reading Nishida after Levinas.

1. The Enigmaof a Relation between Absolute Others

Both Nishida and Levinas speak of the other person as an »absolute

other«. Yet Derrida questions whether this is not in fact a contradiction
in terms . »Other than must be other than myself. Henceforth , it is no
longer absolved of a relation to an ego. Therefore, it is no longer infi-
nitely, absolutel y other. «6 In other words, if the other is truly absolutely
other, then he or she is absolved of all relation to mys elf. Insofar as the
other does have a relation to myself, then he or she is only relatively
other ; his or her alterity is an otherness relative to my sameness. Rather
than a refutation of Nishida's and Levinas's projects, however, Derrida's
critical comment serves to sharpen the enigmatic issue th ey are both
grappling with: How can the self relate to, without denying the alterity
of, an other? How can persons be related to one another even when they
do not share anything in common? How can there be, as Alphon so
Lingis puts it, a '»community of those who have nothing in common«. 7
Lingis's question is posed in the wake not only of Levinas but also of
Nancy and Blanchot, who are concerned with moving beyond the pit-
falls of both atom istic liberal individualism and totalitarian communi sm
by way of thinking a »community without communion«, a community
rooted in the fact that singular human beings are exposed to one an-
other in their shared mortal finitude without being reducible to what
they possess or produce in common. 8

• Jacques Derrida , I:icriture et la diff erence (fditions du Seuil, 1967), p. 185; Writing
and Difference, translated by Alan Bass (Chicago: 1978), p. 126.
7
Alphonso Lingis, The Comm unit y of Those Who Have Nothing in Common (Bloo-
mington: 1994).
R Jean-Luc Nancy, La com,mmaut,! desaeuvr ie (Christian Bourgois, 1986); Maurice
Blanchot, La communauti inavouable (Les Editions de Minuit , 1983).

315
Bret W. Davis

Yet both Nishida and Levinas understand that which unites us,
despite our radical alterity, not only as our shared mortality but also as
that which is otherwise than or beyond being; and they both unde rstand
this something - or this Nothing - in religious terms. However,
whereas Levinas, writing from a Jewish background, understands God
in »metaphysical« as well as »meontological « terms as an »absolute ex-
teriority« transcending the immanence of the world of nature and
being, 9 Nishida, writing from an East Asian Mahayana Buddhist back-
ground, understands God or Buddha in »panentheistic« 10 terms as »the
place of absolute nothingness« that »immanently transcends« and »en-
compasses« our personal and interpersonal being as well as the world of
nature. As we shall see, despite their agreement on the need to think
through the enigma of a relation between absolute others, there is a
fundamental disagreement between Nishida and Levinas as to the phi-
losophy of religion that best enables us to do so.
Let us begin with Nishida and the question of what unites self and
other. We might seek to explain the commonality of self and other in
terms of a basic principle of Nishida's »logic of place«: Two things are
always related on the basis of a third thing, namely the place in which
their relation takes place. A patch of red, for example, can be related to
and distinguished from a patch of blue insofar as they both exist within
a field of color; Nishida would say that they are both self-determina-
tions (i.e., self-delimitations) of the universal of color.11 Can we think
self and other in this manner?
In I and Thou Nishida does in fact initially say that we must try to
think the sense in which »I and Thou are determined by the same uni-
versal«.12 But some pages later he strikingly claims that »there is no
universal whatsoever that subsumes I and Thou«. 13 Why would he
deny that self and other could be encompassed by the same universal?
Because, if self and other were related merely as different particulariza-

9 Levinas uses the term »meontology« (from rneon or »non-being«) in reference to the
Biblical God who he says is »not of this world« and »other than being« (LK, 25). On the
applicability of a different sense of the term »rneontology« to Nishida and the Kyoto
School's thought, see my »The Kyoto School«, in: The Stanford Encyclopediaof Philo-
sophy (http://plato.sta nford.ed u/entries/kyoto-school/, 2010 edition), section 3.1.
10
NKZ I, 11:399.
11
Cf. NKZ I, 4:225.
12
NKZ I, 6:372.
13
NKZ 1, 6:381.

316
 Ethical and Religious Alterity: Nishida after Levinas

tions of the same universa l, this essential sameness would undermine

their individuality and mutual alterity, reducing, in Levinas's language,
the Other (l'Autre) to the Same (le Meme). »I, you - these are not
individuals of a common concept.« 14 And yet, on the other hand, if there
were no universal whatsoever that encompasses self and other, if they
were to share absolutely nothing in common, how could an encounter
between them ever take place? If the re is no commonality within which
they are differentiated, would it even make sense then to speak of alter-
ity? On what basis would their difference be recognized? Can there
logically and ontologically be difference without sameness?
Although he contrasts his ethics of alterity with what he sees as
ontology's problematic privileging of sameness, Levinas also stru ggles
with this paradox of how to conceive of a relation between absolutes,
that is, with how it is that individuals can both be related to others and
at the same time absolved from this relation. In Totality and Infinity
Levinas writes: »The same and the other at the same time maintain
them selves in relationship and absolve themselves from this relation,
remain absolutely separated.« 15 Nishida would sympathize with this
statement, as well as with Levinas's claim that it is langu age - or, as
Nishida would say, »expression« in general16 - that enables this para-
doxical relation between absolutes: »The fact that the face maintains a
relation with me by discourse does not range him in the same: He re-
mains absolute within the relatio n.« 17

2. Nothing Unites Us: Nishida's Topology of the I-Thou

Relation,

Yet how is this non-reductive communication , this discourse or expres-

sive sharing, possible in the first place? Nishida writes: » The I is deter-
mined by that which includes both I and Thou«, namely, by »the depths
of the eternal« which envelop even the temporal self-determinations of
individuals. 18 And so I and Thou are originally related in that both are

14
Tel, 9/Tal, 39.
15
Tel, 75/Tal, 102; see also Tel, 229/Tal, 251.
" Cf. NKZ I, 7:266-267.
17
Tel, 169/Tal, 195; see also Tel, 190/Ta l, 215.
" NKZ I, 7:136.

317
Bret W. Davis

self-determinations of absolute nothingness as the »eternal now«. I and

Thou can understand one another's expressions because we are our-
selves expressions of the place of absolute nothingness, which the later
Nishida understands as the dialectically self-determining historical
world . Self and other authentically relate to one another as self-aware
focal points of the same infinitely self-differentiating absolute nothing-
ness.19
Levinas would likely question whether such an Eastern meontol-
ogy of an all-embracing »place of absolute nothingness« offers a genu-
ine alternative to Western »ontology«, which he critically defines as »a
reduction of the other to the same by interposition of a middle and
neutral term that ensures the comprehension of being«. 20 In line with
his critique of Heidegger's topological conception of being as the world
of the fourfold, Levinas may well have viewed Nishida's panentheistic
philosophy of place as yet another example of what he calls »the eternal
seductiveness of paganism« which attempts to »rediscover a childhood
mysteriously snuggled up inside the Place«. »One's attachment to
Place« inevitable involves, for Levinas, one's »implementation in a
landscape«, a locale of tradition and culture, and is thus »the very split-
ting of humanity into natives and strangers«. »Judaism«, Levinas de-
clares, »is perhaps no more than the negation of all that«, insofar as it
introduces an »abstract universalism« that transcends the particularity
of place.21
However, while Nishida does indeed think that insofar as we are
determinate beings we are situated within »concrete universals« - spe-
cific »places« which not only determine us but which are »counter-de-
termined« by us - to criticize Nishida's topological thinking by saying
that it remains bound to local particularity would be to conflate what he
means by »the universal of nothingness« (mu no ippansha $0)-A\t
;;/r) with what he means by »universals of being« (u no ippansha :1,-rO)
-M:;;/r). 22 This crucial distinction clarifies Nishida's apparent equivoca-
tion over whether or not there is a universal that encompasses both self
and other. While there is no universal with determinate content - i.e.,
no »universal of being« - that can ever completely encompass self and

19 Cf. NKZ I, 7:425; NKZ I, 10:437, 441; NKZ I, 11:378.

20 Tel, 13/Tal, 43.
21 DL, 299- 303/DF, 231- 234 .
22 NKZ I, 6:386 .

318
 Ethical and Religious Alterity: Nishida after Levinas

other, there must nevertheless in some sense be a place in which their

dialogical encounter and dialectical interaction takes place. Nishida's an-
swer to the dilemma of how to think the togetherness of singular indi-
viduals is that, since reduction to any communal »universal of being«
would cancel out true individuali ty and absolute alterity, a genuine
meeting between self and other can only take place in a »universal of
nothingness«, that is, in what he comes to call »the place of absolute
nothingness«.
While this place of absolute nothingness is in a sense the ultimate
»medium « (baikaisha YI1t-1t) that enables the mutual determinat ion
between one individual and another, as well as between these indivi-
duals and the specific concrete universals of their historical and cultural
communities , the sense of »medium« here is not that of a universal of
being with determinate content. According to Nishida, to speak of »the
self-determination of absolute nothingness« means that it is not a being
standing apart from - either above or below - that which is mediated; it
is rather nothing other than the self-determination and mutual deter-
mination of individua ls and specific universals.
When individuals are thought of as mutually determining, it must be
thought that they exist in a medium, but at the same time that the med-
ium exists by virtue of the mutual determination of individuals. Thus we
may think of creation as the function of the self-determination of abso-
lute nothingness.n
As what Nishida calls a »mediationless mediation« (mubaikaiteki baikai
$ YI1r-tl9 YI11'-)
or a »mediation without a mediator<<(baikai suru mono
naki mono no baikai :/1,f-Jr-"t 0 t 0) tJ:~ t O)O)YI-Jr-)24 that allows for

the »continuity of discontinuity« (hirenzoku no renzoku ~fit~O)it

~) between individu als, the place of absolute nothingness is an open
field of dialectical interac tion rather than an enclosure of reductive
homogenization.
Moreover, absolute nothingness is not merely a place that »sur-
rounds« self and other; it is also found in each individual' s depth s as
the source of his or her freedom and responsibility. On the one hand ,
as an absolute negativity discovered at the heart of the self, it strips one
of all att achments and possessions to particular forms of being and

n NKZ I, 7:163.
24
NKZ I, 6:9, 386.

319
Bret W. Davis

opens one up to other possibilities of being and to the being of others.

On the other hand, as a kenotically self-negating nothingness (in Bud-
dhist terms, a self-emptying of emptiness into form), it allows the self to
reform itself in dialogical and dialectical relation to others.
Nishida speaks not only of the human other as an »absolute other«
(zettai no ta ~tjf0)1tl!,), but also at times of absolute nothingness as »an
absolute Other in the depths of the self«. While I capitalize »Other« in
the latter case to maintain the crucial distinction between these two
senses of the term, for Nishida the experiences of encountering both
religious and interpersonal alterity in the depths of the self are interre-
lated. In a key passage of »I and Thou« , Nishida writes:
By way of recognizing an absolute Other [i.e., absolute nothingness) in
the depths of the self, without mediation one is able to pass over to an
other [person]. But this does not mean that self and other are united
without distinction. Rather, it must be understood in the sense that I
and Thou are joined through the medium of the absolute Other [i.e.,
absolute nothingness].[ ... In this absolute nothingness] I can hear your
voice and you mine.25
The alterity of the other person is thus recognized not by way of pene -
trating laterally through the walls of the ego, but rather by way of
passing through an opening in one's own depths . I paradoxically en-
counter th e irreducible exteriority of the other person in the depths of
myself; I discover that others are always already in me. This inclusion of
alterity is not a reduction of the other to the self; to the contrary , it is an
originary expropriation of the self. In its innermost depths the self is
exposed to alterity, and so to know oneself is to be open to others.
For Nishida, the discovery of the other in the self thus entails an
experience, not of imperialistic sovereignty, but of infinite responsibil-
ity. In a passage which in crucial respects anticipates Levinas's account of
»subjectivity as the other in the same«, as »having-the-other-in -one 's-
skin« such that »the more I return to myself [... ] the more I discover
myself to be responsible« to the other to the point of »substitution «/ 6
Nishida writes:

25NKZ I, 6:398.
26
AE, 141, 146, 143/0B, 111, 115, 112. Note that, whereas in Totality and Infinity
Levmas had stressed the »exteriority« of the other and the »separation« of the same
and the other, in Otherwise than Being he speaks of »the other in the same« and of
»substitution « as a matter of »one-for-the-other«.

320
 Ethical and Religious Alte rity: N ishida after Levinas

There is no responsibility as long as the other that is seen at the bottom

of the self is thought of as the self. Only when I am I by virtue of the
Thou I harbor in my depths do I have an infinite responsibility at the
bottom of my existence itself.27

3. Questions of Symmetry and Self-transcendence

Having touche d on a point of profound convergence betw een Nishida

and Levinas, we need to turn our attent ion back to some equally signif-
icant divergences. Alongside a suspicion of the »encompassing « quality
of Nishida 's philosophy of place, Levinas would no doubt also question
the »symmetrical« manner in which Nishida often presents the relation
between self and other. The »moral experience«, writes Levinas, »indi-
cates a metaphysical asymmetry: The radical impossibility of seeing
oneself from the outsi de and of speaking in the same sense of oneself
and of the others, and consequently the impossibility of totalizati on«. 28
He would thus be critical of Nishida 's statem ents such as:
In recognizing you, I am I, and, in recognizing me, you are you. You are
in the depths of me, and I am in the depths of you. We are joined to-
gether in that I pass through my depths toward you, and you pass
through your depths toward me.29
When Nishida writes, »I am wha t allows you to be you, and you are
what allows me to be me«, 30 from what standpoint is he speaking? Is he
speaking from a standpoint that transcends both self and other?
It could indeed be said that Nishida allows for the possibility of a
more radical self-transcendence than does Levinas. Following Zen, Ni-
shida speaks of the deepest layer of consciousness as being beyond all
dualities, including that of self and God. In an essay from his midd le
period (1928), he writes:
When we truly enter thoroughly into the consciousness of absolute
nothingness, there is neither >I<nor God. And because this is absolute
nothingness, the mountain is mountain, the river is river, and all beings
are just as they are.3 1
27
NKZ I, 6:420.
is Tel, 24/Tal, 53.
29
NKZ I, 6:381.
0
·' NKZ I, 6:415.
11 NKZ I, 5:182.

321
Bret W. Davis

When Nishida speaks symmetrically of I and Thou, does he then speak

from a standpoint transcending - or radically preceding - both, a stand-
point from out of which he can say, with Dagen, »thus am I, thus are
you (ware mo mata nyoze, nanji mo mata nyoze if t i/J'J(ll~, 7.k 1tiJJ'
J(ll;/!:)«,32 and say so in such a manner that lets us both be in our radical
unity as well as in our phenomenal distinctness?
Perhaps. Yet in and after his essay on the I-Thou relation (1932),
Nishida increasingly stresses human finitude. It is noteworthy, in this
regard, that in his last completed essay, The Logic of Place and the Re-
ligious Worldview (Basho no ronri to shukyoteki sekaikan ~ f}rO)~J!
t *~~ -tlt-W-t!l.) (1945), Nishida refers not only to Zen but just as
often to Shinran's Shin Buddhism, which teaches that humans are so
mired in delusory and egoistic passions that salvation can only come
about by means of an utter reliance on the grace of Amida Buddha.
Nevertheless, according to Nishida, Shin's so-called path of »Other-
power« (tariki -ft}J) and Zen's so-called path of »self-power« (jiriki ~
,7J)are, when properly understood, two approaches to the same basic
standpoint of Mahayana Buddhism. 33 Zen enlightenment, he says, does
indeed entail attaining to an »absolute freedom«, as expressed in Linji's
teaching of» becoming master wherever you are« and metaphorically in
the image of »Panshan waiving a sword in the air«. Yet he goes on to say
that this does not mean that one becomes a »Nietzschean God-man« but
rather that one becomes a »man of God« in the sense of a »servant of the
Lord«. 34 Although he repeatedly stresses that God or Buddha is not
found outside the self but rather in the self's own bottomless depths,
he also stresses that it is discovered there only by way of repentance and
radical self-negation. 3s Nishida thus writes that only »a true absolute

32
UEDA Shizuteru, Ikiru to iu koto: keiken to jikaku [What it means to live: Experience
and self-awareness] (Kyoto: 1991), p. 67.
33
NKZ I, 11:411 - 412. See also Bret W. Davis, »Naturalness in Zen and Shin Buddhism:
Before and Beyond Self- and Other-Power«, in: Contemporary Buddhism, forthcoming .
34
NKZ I, 11:449. Note that »Lord« is written with the same character as Linji's »master«
(3'.). A recent Zen master, Omori Siigen, writes that Linji's notion of »becoming master
wherever you are« is »not a matter of selfishly asserting >me, me<all the time, but rather
quite the opposite . It is a n:iatter of negating the self in the ground of the self, of trans-
cending the self and returning to the absolute, that is, of discovering the true self in
something absolute, and of acting on the basis of its affirmation. If each of our actions is
rooted in this kind of standpoint, it arises naturally from an absolute freedom« (Rinzai-
roku kowa [Lectures on The Record of Linji] [Tokyo: 2005], p. 95).
35
Cf. NKZ I, 11:408, 411.

322
 Ethical and Religious Alterity: Nishida after Levinas

passivity« can give rise to a »true absolute activity «. He refers in this

context to his notion of an »active intuition « (koiteki chokkan fr ii, FY'J
1E{
t!I.)in which one »sees a thing by becoming that thing «, and to Dogen's
statement that, »to forget the self is to be verified by the myriad things
of the world«. Moreover, Nishida says tha t not only artistic activity, but
also »moral activity is rooted in this truly selfless action of active intui-
tion<<.·16
Let us return to the question: When Nishida speaks in symmetrical
terms of the I-Thou relation, does this imply the attainment of a stand -
point beyond both self and other? In h is later writings Nishida con-
tinues to affirm a kind of a radical self-transcendence ; in his final essay
on religion he maintains that the true self entails in its dept hs a dyna-
mically »contradictory identity« with the absolute. And yet, in his later
writings Nishida also stresses that »the individual becomes an indivi -
dual by means of facing other individuals«Y Insofar as there is an in-
dividual self, there are others. That is to say, insofar as the self has a
finite form, it stands over against the finite forms of others . Moreover,
in and after »I and Thou«, Nishida clearly maintains that the finite self
as such cannot directly know the thoughts and feelings of other finite
selves, and so the alterity of the other's consciousness cannot be reduced
to the sameness of the self's consciousness . In »I and Thou«, Nishida
writes:
There must be understood to be an absolute alterity between my con-
sciousness and the consciousnessof another. In the sense that my con-
sciousness cannot become another's consciousness, I absolutely cannot
know the consciousnessof another.38
Here Nishida's thought resonates with Levinas's insistence, especially
in Totality and Infinity, on the unbridgeable gap of alterity that lies
between self and other.
Yet it is Levinas who later speaks of ethical »substitution« as invol-
ving a self-transcendence so radical that it entails other- transcendence.
In what is to my mind one of the most radical passages in his most
radical text , Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, Levinas writes :

16
· NKZ I, 11:438.
·" NKZ I, 7: 225, 346; NKZ I, 8: 59-60, 65.
'" NKZ I, 6 :393 .

323
 Bret W. Davis

Through substitution for others, the oneself [le Soi-meme] escapesrela-

tions. [... ] In the incomparable relationship of responsibility, the other
no longer limits the same [le meme], it is supported by what it limits.
[... ] In this most passive passivity,the self liberates itself ethically from
every other and from itself. [.. .] It is an openness of which respiration is
a modality or a foretaste, or, more exactly,of which it retains the after-
taste. Outside of any mysticism, in this respiration, the possibility of
every sacrificefor the other, activity and passivity coincide.39
Levinas suggests that this coincidence of activity and passivity entails »a
different freedom from that of an initiative«, 40 hinting at a positive
sense of freedom that is radically other than the egocentric sense of
freedom he most often speaks of, as for instance when he says that an
»imperialism of the same is the whole essence of freedom«. 41 True »hu-
man autonomy«, according to Levinas, »rests on a supreme hetero-
nomy« , namely that of enduring the actions of a cause »which is exter-
nal par excellence, divine action«. 42 Yet, in speaking of this »most
passive passivity«, does not Levinas begin to intimate a mode of action
beyond, or radically before, the very dichotomy of passivity and activ-
ity, as is also the case with the non -egoistic freedom of Shinran's »dhar-
mic naturalness« (jinenhoni mM5iffl), Nishida's active intuition , and
Dogen's »undivided activity« (zenki ±~)? To be sure, it is hard to
imagine Levinas ever disavowing the »externality« of God and ac-
knowledging what some Zen thinkers speak of as an »absolute self«
(zettai jisha ~Ht !§I;ff) or an »absolute of-itself« (zettaiji tt.Jt m)
rather than an »absolute Other«. 43 Yet does not the substitution Levinas
speaks of in Otherwise than Being at least go beyond his· prior insis-
tence on the unbridgeable »externality« of the human other? Does not
Levinas here speak of a transgression, if not an obliteration, of the »se-
paration « between self and other in a manner that resonates with D6-
gen's claim that dropping off th·e body-mind of the self also entails
dropping off the body-mind of others, 44 and with the Bodhisattva prac-

39 AE, 146/OB, 115.

40 AE, 146/OB, 115.
1
• Tel, 59/Tal, 87, cf. Tel, 56-57 /Ta i, 84-85.
" DL, 25/DF, 11.
43
See Zoho Hisamatsu Shin'ichi chosakushii [Expanded Edition of the Collected works
of H1SAMATSU Shin'ichi] (Tokyo: 1994), vol. 2, pp. 64-68; and Nishitani Keiji chosa-
kushii [Collected Works of N1smrANIKeijil (Tokyo: 1987), vol. 13, pp. 46- 47.
44
Bret W. Davis, »The Presencing of Truth : Dogen's Genj6k6an«, in: Jay Garfield and

324
 Ethical and Religious Alterity : Nishida after Levinas

tice of the »perfection of giving« which transcends , or radically pre-

cedes, the very duality of giver and receiver ?4 5

4. Symmetrical Teaching of Ethical Asymmetry

Be that as it may, Levinas wou ld certainly still want to clearly distin-

guish the self-transcendence involved in ethical substitution from the
self-transcendence involved in a theoretical or »ontological « explana-
tion of interpersonal relations. Whereas the former is a sacrificing of
the self for the singular other, he views the latter as a violent form of
generalization which serves to appropriate the other into the horizon of
the self's powers of comprehension. Levinas's concern with Nishida 's
bidirectional explanations of the relation between self and other would
be that , in the step from a first person face-to-face encounter, in which I
feel myself to be asymmetrically responsible to the other , to a third
person theoretica l reflection on the relation between self and other, in
which both appear to be symmetr ically responsible to one another , we
cross the crucial line separating an ethics of infinite responsibility from
an ontology of neutralizing totality. The space of ethics is not a Eucli-
dian grid that can be surveyed from the disengaged distance of a third
person perspective ; ethics involve s a »curvatur e of intersubjecti ve
space« wherein the other »comes to us from the outside « and is »placed
higher than me«. 46 FUJITA Masakatsu thus concludes that Nishida's phi-
losophy of interpersonal relations needs to be supplemented by Levi-
nas's account of the as.ymmetricality of the first person experience of
the ethical relation itself. 47
It is noteworthy that when Nishida writ es, »I have an infinite re-
sponsibility at the bottom of my existence itself« to the other , he does
not turn thi s particular statement around .48 But even were he to do so,
his symmetrical explanations of the I-Thou relation need not be taken
to imply that this relationship is not in fact experienced asymmetrically.

William Edelglass (eds.), Buddhist Philosophy: EssentialReadings, edited by (New York

and Oxford: 2009), pp. 256- 257.
5
• Don ald W. Mitchell, Buddhism: Introducing the Buddhist Experience(New York and
Oxford : 2002), p. 113.
.,, Tel, 267 /Tal, 291.
47
Fujita, Nishida Kitnrii no shisaku-selrni,pp. 135-140.
" NKZ I, 6:381.

325
Bret W. Davis

Derrida's critical response to Levinas's critique of Husserl's conception

of the »alter ego« is applicable here as well. I can experience the other as
other only because I can recognize that he or she is, in a crucial sense,
the same as me, namely a human being with his or her own inaccessible
first person experience . At the very least Derrida's critique implies that
a philosophical account of the relation between self and other may re-
quire speaking in terms of »the transcendental symmetry of two em-
pirical asymmetries«. 49 Yet this also means that, even though one may
philosophically understand there to be a symmetrical relation between
self and other, this understanding may still derive from and return us to
the first person experience of an asymmetrical responsibility to others.
Indeed, is this not how Levinas's own texts inevitably operate? Do
not Levinas's texts themselves, which are, after all, philosophical and
not simply autobiographical, speak universally - that is to say, symme-
trically - of the asymmetrical obligation to the other? For example,
when Levinas frequently remarks, »Each of us is guilty before everyone
for everyone, and I more than the others«, 50 he is not just speaking in
the first person, and our proper response as readers should not be to
think that this particular individual »Emmanuel Levinas« is confessing
to being an especially guilty person. Rather, Levinas is quoting Dos-
toyevsky or, more precisely, his character Alyosha, who is in turn relat-
ing the autobiographical account of the character Father Zossima, who
is in turn quoting - and supplementing - the words of his brother Mar-
kel on his deathbed. In fact, Father Zossima tells of how, after being
struck by this thought in his youth, he went around town teaching it
to all who would listen. 51 By means of th ese literary devices, Dostoyevs-
ky reveals how the teaching of asymmetrical responsibility is passed on
to all, equally, universally, that is to say, symmetrically. Is this not ana-
logous to what Levinas is doing in his philosophical treatises, when he
in effect tells all his readers that they are each asymmetrically respon-
sible to one another?
After receiving Derrida's critique, Levinas attends more carefully
to the tension that exists in his work insofar as he attempts to write

49
Derrida, L'ecriture et la diff erence, p. 185; Writing and Difference, p. 126.
50
Levinas's numerous citations of this line from Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karama-
zov (Book VI, Ila) include AE, 186/OB, 146; BPW, 102, 144; and LK, 31.
51
Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazo v, transla ted by Constance Garnett (Lon-
don: 1913), p. 318.

326
 Ethical and Religious Alterity : N ishida after Levinas

philosophically (i.e., in the language of symmetrical universality) about

ethics (i.e., an asymmetrical relation). The philosopher inevitably steps
back into the presumed neutrality of a mediating spectator, ironically
reducing ethically asymmetrical »saying« to a symmetrical »said« pre-
cisely by speaking theoretically about it, that is to say, by thema tizing
it.52 And yet, conversely, we could say that even when the »said« of
Levinas's as well as Nishida's texts speaks directly or indirectly of sym-
metry, the »saying« and, we could add, the »hearing<<or »reading« of
these texts can still convey a sense for the asymmetricality of the ethical
relation.
Levinas's stress on the asymmetry of the ethical relation is mot i-
vated in part by a concern that putting the I and the Thou on par with
one another and speaking of a reciprocal relation between them tends to
presuppose a »third person« who views the relation from the outside .53
And yet, in order to move from face-to- face »ethics« to societal »jus-
tice«, Levinas himself recognizes the need to appeal to - or rather to
attend to the appeal of - »the third party [le tiers]«, that is to say, »the
whole of humanity «. 54 Nishida also refers to the third person »he«
(kare '1lt)in order to move from the I-Thou relation - which can devolve
into a mere »expansion of the world of the I« into a communa l we 55 - to
a perspective that tak es the whole world into account. 56
According to Levinas, this appeal of the third party - i.e., the
»other of the other« or the »neighbor of the neighbo r« - is already
included in the appeal of the face of the other ; »the epiphany of the face
qua face opens humanity «.-57In other words, the call to justi ce for all,
including ultimately even for oneself, is included in the call to ethical
responsibility that occurs in the encounter with the singular face of the
other.

" On the distinction and the relation between the »saying« and the »said«, see AE, 6- 9,
47- 49, 58-65, 197- 207/OB, 5-7, 37- 38, 45-51 , 153- 162.
53
See Levinas's critique of Buber in this regard in Tel, 40-41 /Tal, 68- 69; also see Robert
Bernasconi, »Failure of Communication as a Surplus: Dialogue and Lack of Dialogue
between Buber and Levinas«, in: Peter Atterton, Matthew Calarco and Maurice Friedman
(eds.), Levinas and Bub er: Dialogue and Difference, (Pittsburgh: 2004), esp. p. 76.
54
Tel, 188/Tal, 213; cf. AE, 19- 20, 163-64/OB , 16, 127.
'·' NKZ I, 8:62.
56
Cf. NKZ I, 7:210, 313-314; NKZ I, 8:56-69 .
·" Tel, 188, 257/Tal, 213, 280. See also Levinas's statements in Jill Robbins (ed.), ls It
Righteous to Be? Interviews with Emmanu el Levinas (Stanford: 2001), pp. 54, 115-116.

327
Bret W. Davis

Let us read a key passage from Otherwise than Being in which

Levinas relates the asymmetry of the ethical relation back to the sym-
metry of justice for all, including oneself, and furthermore roots both
interpersonal ethics and societal justice in the indirect »relation without
relation« to »illeity« (illeite), that is, to the »he-ness« of God.
In proximity the other obsesses me according to the absolute asymmetry
of signification, of the one-for-the-other: I substitute myself for him,
whereas no one can replace me (... ] The relationship with the third party
is [however] an incessant correction of the asymmetry of proximity in
which the face is looked at. There is weighing, thought, objectification,
and thus a degree in which my anarchic relationship with illeity is be-
trayed, but in which it is conveyed before us. There is betrayal of my
anarchic relation with illeity, but also a new relationship with it: It is only
thanks to God that, as a subject incomparable with the other, I am ap-
proached as an other by the others, that is, »for myself«. »Thanks to
God« I am an other for the others. God is not involved as an alleged
interlocutor: The reciprocal relationship binds me to the other man in
the trace of transcendence, in illeity.58
Here we see how, for Levinas, the face of the other does not only de-
mand asymmetrical sacrifice, but at the same time conveys the appeal of
the third party and thus the imperative of justice for all, including one-
self. Moreover, the face conveys, or rather first of all confronts us as a
face on account of, the trace of God as what he calls »illeity« .

5. God as Father: Levinas'sFraternal Community

God is thus for Levinas a special kind of transcendent »third«, radically

other than the first person »I«, the second person »you« or »thou«, and
the third person »he« or »she«, not to mention the neutral »it«. Levi-
nas's neologism »illeity « is meant to indicate that God is the absolute
Other, a He who can never become an intimate Thou, and who thwarts
all thematic object ification. 59 Rather than appearing in the world as an
object or an interlocutor, Levinas suggests that the »curvature of space«
that happens in the ethical encounter with the face of a human other is
itself »the very presence of God«. 60 The face of the other is »the mani-
58
AE, 201- 2/OB, 158.
59
AE, 15, 188, 191/OB, 12, 147, 150; BPW, 61, 141.
0
• Tel, 267/Tai, 291.

328
 Ethical and Religious Alterity : Nishida after Levinas

festation of the height in which God is revealed«. 61 The commandment

not to kill comes to us proximally from the face of the finite other, but it
is the »Infinite [that] orders me to the neighbor as a face«.62 The ethical
command thus ultimately comes from God on High , who is experienced
only in passing, as when God covers Moses's eyes when He passes by so
that Moses can see only His back and not His face.63 For Levinas, how-
ever, this illeity or trace of the absolute exteriority of God is not experi-
enced alone on a mountaintop but rather in society as the epiphany of
the ethical command in the face of other persons.
Levinas's ethics is thus interwoven with his philosophy of religion.
In his attempt to address the enigma tha t we began with, namely that of
a relation that preserves alterity, in Totality and Infinity Levinas speci-
fically turns to »religion«, which he defines as »the bond [le lien] that is
established between the same and the other without constituting a to-
tality«. 64 Because individual »men are absolutely different from one
another«, says Levinas, they cannot be comprehended under a univer sal
concept. And yet, he adds, the concept of man does have »a single ex-
tension, and that is human fraterni ty«. 65 In other words , the one thing
that unites all humans is that they are siblings of a common Father. In a
passage that makes explicit the manner in which he thinks of »fraternal
community« in Biblical terms, Levinas writes :
Human fraternity has then two aspects: it involves individualities whose
logical status is not reducible to the status of ultimate differences in a
genus [genre], for their singularity consists in each referring to itself.
(An individual havi~g a common genus with another individual would
not be removed enough from it.) On the other hand, it involves the
commonness of a father, as though the commonness of race [genre]
would not bring together enough. Society must be a fraternal commu-
nity to be commensurate with the straightforwardness, the primary
proximity, in which the face presents itself to my welcome.Monotheism
signifies this human kinship, this idea of a human race that refers back to
the approach of the Other in the face, in a dimension of height, in re-
sponsibility for oneself and for the Other. 66

61 Tel, 51/Tal, 79.

62
AE, 191/O B, 150.
~' Exodus, 33 :23.
6-1 Tel, 10/Tal, 40.
61
BPW, 27.
66
Tel, 189- 90/ Tal, 214.

329
Bret W. Davis

Nishida also turns to religion in order to think through the paradoxes of

the I-Thou relation, and in many respects he would be sympathetic with
Levinas's Biblical conception of fraternity. This is evident in the con-
cluding paragraph of »I and Thou«, where Nishida interpretively adopts
the Christian teaching of »loving thy neighbor as thyself«.
I and Thou are in the same history, and as beings that are determined by
history, we are God's creatures. I, a creature of God, love Thee, another
creature of God, as myself. That I and Thou are in agape must be under-
stood to mean that I and Thou are, as God's creatures, in the historical
world.67
The parallels with Levinas's »fraternal community« are not insignifi-
cant. And yet, Nishida would be critical of Levinas's transcendent the-
ism. Although Nishida often prefers to interpretively adopt rather than
oppose Biblical (especially Christian) language, he has considerable mis-
givings about the externally transcendent nature of the Biblical God,
and prefers to see God or Buddha as the kenotically enveloping place
of the natural and historical world.
Levinas, for his part, could agree with Nishida that we hear the
voice of the absolute in the depths of ourselves as a call to »infinite
responsibility« and as »moral commands« to action in the historical
world. 68 He could also agree with Nishida that we should »see God in a
place where God is not«, 69 that is to say, in the midst of our everyday
interactions with others. For Nishida, however, this is ultimately a mat-
ter of »dharrnic naturalness«, whereas Levinas always portrays the at-
tunement of ethical existence as an anxious restlessness, an insatiable
metaphysical desire, an obsession with the other, a feeling of being held
hostage to the other, of being persecuted by the other, of bearing an
infinite debt to the other, and so on .
Nishida does not see infinite responsibility and infinite effort as
being at odds with the freedom of a genuine naturalness. Of »dharmic
naturalness«, a phrase he borrows from Shinran to indicate the reli-
gious wellspring of everyday ethical conduct, 70 Nishida writes:
[.. .] it must include infinite effort, and must not merely be a matter of
going with the flow. And yet, it should be recognized that one's efforts
67
NKZ I, 6:427.
68
Cf. e.g . NKZ I, 6:294, 420; NKZ I, 8:55; NKZ I, 10:330; NKZ I, 11:435.
69 NKZ I, 11:462.
70
NKZ I, 11:437-438.

330
 Ethical and Religious Alterity: Nishida afte r Levinas

are themselves not one's own. There is something which of itself natu-
rally allows things to happen (onozukara shikarashimeru mono § GM
G LA':l0t0)). (... This] must not be [thought of as] something that
moves the self either from the outside or from the inside, but rather
[as) something that envelopes the self.71

6. Trans-ascendance or Trans-descendance: Where is God?

Levinas would presumably object not only to the »spontaneous« (ono-

zukara § '97J'G) quality of dharmic naturalness , 72 but also to the idea
of Buddha or God as »enveloping« the self. For Levinas, »God is outside
and is God for that very reason«,73 and the »paradox of creation« is the
»paradox of an Infinity admitting a being outside of itself which it does
not encompass«. 74 Were Infinity, or God, to encompass finite human
being, for Levinas this would mean that it woul d be yet another vio-
lently reductive totality that would not admit the separate existence of
singular individuals. But, for Nishida, this conclusion is based on a con-
ception of an encompassing being, rather than an encompassing - and
self-negating - absolute nothingness. Moreover, it is based on a too
dualistic conception of the relation between God and humans . Nishida's
alternative is neither a monistic nor a pantheistic but rather a kenoti-
cally panentheistic conception of God or Buddha as at once the imma-
nently transcendent source of the self's freedom and responsibility and
as the place in which self and other interrelate .
Since his first book, An Inquiry into the Good (Zen no kenkyii ¼
O).J,}f~ ), Nishida understood the divine, not as a »transcendent God«
who »rules the world from the outside« , but rather as »the basis of
nature« and »the basis of the self«. 75 The world is the »expression or
manifestation « of this self-determining basis rather than a »creation« of

71 NKZ I, 12:369.
72
What Levinas speaks of as »spont aneity« (cf. Tel, 13, 280/ Tal, 43, 303) is decidedly no t
the spontaneous dharmic naturalness that Shinran and Nishida speak of, but is rather
akin to the ego-generated acts they refer to as »self-power« (understood as »ego-power «)
or »calculation « (hakarai tin '':, ~') . While Levinas occasionally hints of a non-ego-
centric freedom, he never, to my knowledge, recognizes a non-egocentric spontaneity .
This sharply distinguishes his thought not only from Zen but also from Shin Buddhism .
7
·' DL, 49/DF, 29.
74
Tel, 76/Ta l, 103.
75
NKZ I, 1:174-176.

331
Bret W. Davis

an external deity.76 Nishida later speaks of God as the })immanently

transcendent« principle of creativity in »the self-determination of his-
torical nature«. 77 By contrast, Levinas says that »God cannot appear as
the cause or creator of nature. [... ] God does indeed go against nature,
for He is not of this world.« 78
According to Levinas, in Judaism »the feminine will never take on
the aspect of the Divine«;79 the personal form proper to the Biblical God
is that of a Father, not a Mother, and thus human society is a fraternal
rather than a materna l community. Nishida, on the other hand, writes
of the absolute in the depths of the self as both »God the Father and
Buddha the Mother«. 80 Nishida's philosophy of place, in fact, tends to-
ward the latter image of the divine as an engendering and embracing
mother. Among the inspirations for Nishida's topological philosophy is
Plato's thought of the chora;yet Nishida's place of absolute nothingness
is not merely an indeterminate »receptacle« of forms, but rather a fe-
cund matrix which is the source of the »relative nothingness« of sub-
jective consciousness as well as abstract forms and concrete particulars,
all of which it generates by way of its self-determination or self-delimi-
tation . Nishida thus did not posit a creator God or a Demiurge outside of
the chora, but rather rethought it as a panentheistic and kenotically
self-determining place of absolute nothingness. In this way, and in con-
trast to Western metaphysics and theology since Plotinus which he says
»pursued the direction of the Father«, Nishida »pursues the direction of
the Mother« and therewith »the profound and true significance of
nothingness [which] was not discovered in Greek philosophy«. 81
East Asian and Mahayana Buddhist thought clearly lies in the
background of Nishida's radical rethinking of Plato's chora. Let it suffice
in the present context to mention in passing just a few relevant in-
stances of this background . The Daodejing claims that being originates
from nothingness and that the Dao, though originally nameless, when
named is »the mother of the ten thousand things«. 82 In The Awakening

76 NKZ I, 1:178.
77 NKZ I, 8:89.
78
LK, 24.
79 DL, 59/DF, 37.
80
NKZ I, 11:408.
81
NKZ I, 12:7, 16-1 7.
82
The Daodejingof Laozi, translated by Philip J. Ivanhoe (Indianapolis: 2003), chapters 1
and 40.

332
 Ethicaland Religious Alterity: Nishida after Levinas

of Faith in the Mahayana, the Tathiigatagarbha - one of the me aning s

of which (indeed the one reflected in its Chinese and hence Japanese
translation as nyoraizo :Ji
ll*~) is »the womb of th e Buddha « - is un-
derstood as the enlightening potentialities of th e »one mind« which,
though in itself empty of discriminations, nondualistically encompasses
all phenomenal forms. 83 Such Daoist and Mahayana Buddhist sources
are synthesized in Zen, such th at we find Ikkyii, for example, speaking
of emptiness as a formless »original field« from which everything arises
and to which everything returns. 84
Among the Biblical religions, Nishida is more symp athetic to
Christianity than he is to Judaism . Whereas the God of the Torah ap-
pears to him to be predominantly a transcendent Lord on High, the God
of the New Testament is (also) an embracing and self-emptying Love.
Nishida finds especially appealing the kenotic or »self-emp tying« na-
ture of the Christian God, who out of love abnegates His transcendent
nature and descends into the world.
A God who does not include a true self-negation is not the true absolute.
That is (merely] a God of judgment, not a God of salvation. That is a
transcendent Lord, not a thoroughly immanent God of absolute Love.85

,u The Awakening of Faith, translated by Yoshi to S. HAKEDA(New York: 1967), pp. 29-
37, 65-67, 76-78 .
"' !KKYU Sojun, Skeletons, translated by R.H . Blyth and Norman Waddell , in: James W.
Heisig, Thomas P. Kasulis, and john C. Ma raldo (eds.), Japanese Philosophy: A Source-
book (Honolulu: 2011), pp. 172, 176-1 77. On the Mahayana Buddhist and in particular
Zen background of Nishida's philoso phy of place, see also Bret W. Davis, »Forms of
Emptiness in Zen «, in: Steven Emmanuel (ed.), A Companion to Buddhist Philosophy
(West Sussex: 2013), section 2 .
' 5 NKZ I, 11:458. Levinas would challenge Nishida's suggesti on that Judaism tends to
depict a God of commandment and judgment rather than a God of self-emptying love. »I
accept kenosis, absolutely «, Levinas once stated in a discussion ; althoug h he goes on to
admit that »within a Jewish context my referenc e to kenosis has provoked objections« (Is
It Righteous to Be?p. 280). ln his essay, »Judaism and Kenosis«, after acknowledging that
»the idea of divine incarnation is foreign to Jewish spiritua lity«, Levinas claims never-
theless that »kenosis also has its full meaning in the religious sensibility of Judaism.[ . .. ]
Terms evoking Divine Majesty and loftiness are often followed or preceded by those
describing a God bending down to look at human misery or inhabiting that misery« (In
the Time of Nations, translated by Michael B. Smith [London: 1994], p. 114). One of the
primordial forms of kenos is Levinas finds in the Hebrew Bible is the ma nner in which
God restrain s himself in His transcendent omnipotence so as to allow for the ethical
responsibility of humans (ibid., p. 126). A further examinati on of th e question of keno -
sis, as it is found in Judaism (including the question of whether this concept has an

333
Bret W. Davis

For Nishida, only the agape of a thoroughly kenotic God, or the com-
passion of a self-emptying Buddha, can save our souls (or, as the case
may be, liberate us from an attachment to them, insofar as the soul is
mistakenly grasped according to a dualistic and reified sense of self).
Moreover, while he acknowledges the role metaphors of external trans-
cendence can play in conveying the authority of moral commandments,
for Nishida, »ethical imperatives issue in truth from the bottom of our
hearts, that is, from the place in which we are embraced by absolute
love«. 86
In short, we have seen how Nishida, like Levinas, understands God
as a special third term that enables the ethical I-Thou relation; but for
Nishida this is better thought of as an immanently transcendent and
kenotically encompassing »place« rather than as an externally transcen-
dent Father. The orientation of Nishida's philosophy of religion thus
diverges markedly from that of Levinas's. For Nishida, God is not an
»absolute exteriority« that is approached by way of what Levinas calls
the »trans-ascendance« (transascendance) of metaphysical desire, 87 but
rather, as the place of absolute nothingness, God lies on the absolute
thither side of the self and can be reached by way of what Nishida calls
»immanent transcendence« or what NISHITANIKeiji calls »tra ns-des-
cendence«. 88 In contrast to a Biblical theism that pursues a path of ex-
ternal transcendence, Nishida suggests that »Buddhism is characterized
by an orientation toward immanent transcendence«. 89

equivalent in the Jewish scriptures; Levinas suggests 'anavah, which is usually translated
as »mod esty« but which he translates as »humility«) and in Christianity (including the
debate over whether kenosis applies to God the Father or just to Christ the Son), and a
comparison with analogous ideas in Mahayana Buddhism and in Nishida 's phi losophy
(such as »the emptying of emptiness« and »the self-ne gation of absolute nothingness «),
is called for. Suffice it to say that Levinas's comments on kenosis challenge or at least
mitigate, even while his repeated stress on the external transcendence of God who com -
mands from on High confirms and reinforces, Nishida's view of the Jewish God.
86
NKZ l, 11:436.
87
Tel, 5/Tal, 35.
88
On NISHITANIKeiji's emp loyment of this neologism, and for his interpretation of
Buddhism as »a religion of the absolute near-side«, see Bret W. Davis, »The Step Back
Through Ni hilism : The Radical Orientation of N ishitani Keiji's Philosophy of Zen«, in:
Synthesis Philosophica 37 (2004) : pp. 139-159.
89
NKZ 1, 11: 434.

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 Ethical and Religious Alterity: Nishida after Levinas

7. RadicalEverydaynessand InverseCorrespondence:
EthicalImplicationsof ImmanentTranscendence

A crucial question at stake here is whether Nishida's kenotic panenthe-

ism or Levinas's transcendent theism is better able to conceive of how
the relation to God is intimately bound up with one's everyday relation
to others. We have seen how the absolute for Nishida not only lies in
the depths of the self as the immanently transcendent source of freedom
and responsibility; it also envelops the self as the place in which self and
other interact . God as the place of absolute nothingness is not outside
the world of human interaction, but rather is the very »mediat ion with -
out a mediator« of this interact ion. 90 Levinas also insists that one en-
counters »the presence of God through one 's relation to man «, and even
claims that the »fact that the relationship with the divine crosses the
relationship with men and coincides with social justice is therefore what
epitomizes the entire spirit of the Jewish Bible«. 91
Nevertheless, the question Nishida might pose to Levinas is this :
Does positing a fraternal community based on the commonality of a
transcendent Father enable t he »straightforwardness« or »primary
proximity« of my relation to the other , as Levinas says, 92 or, despite all
Levinas's insistences to the contrary, does it inevitably divert our atten-
tion from a direct engagement with others in the world to a realm be-
yond the world of being , nature, and history? To be sure, Levinas is at
pains to argue that metaphysical desire for the Good beyond being is
necessarily deflected toward this-worldly ethical action. »The goodness
of the Good«, he says, »inclines the movement it calls forth , to turn it
from the Good and orient it toward the [human] other (autrui), and
only thus toward the Good«. 93 »The supernatural is not an obsession
for Judaism«, he states. 94 »One follows the Most High God«, according
to Levinas, »above all by drawing near to one's fellow man, and showing
concern for >the widow, the orphan, the stranger and the beggar «<.95
Still, Nishida prompts us to question the extent to which Levinas sue-

90 NKZ 1, 6:9, 386; NKZ 1, 7:163, 315.

91
DL, 31, 36/DF, 16, 19; cf. Tel, SO/Tai, 78.
92
Tel, 189- 90/Tal, 214.
,., BPW, 141; cf. 64.
94
DL, 49/DF, 49.
95 DL, 44/ DF, 26 .

335
Bret W. Davis

cessfully reorients metaphysical desire toward this-worldly action and

brings the Biblical Most High down into the here and now.
Whereas Levinas's thought is motivated by a »metaphysical de-
sire« that »tends toward something else entirely, toward the absolutely
other«, a desire for »a land not of our birth«, insofar as »true life« is
purportedly »elsewhere«, not of this world, 96 Nishida insists that true
life is to be found nowhere else than in »the social and historical world«
as »the truly actual world in which we are born, act, and die«. 97 In one of
his more impassioned statements on religion, in which he says that »we
only [truly] live by way of self-negation and listening to the voice of the
absolute at the base of the actual world«, Nishida insists that religious
and moral activity should not have an otherworldly orientation: »There
is nothing that we should will outside of this actual world«. 98 Religion,
as the wellspring of ethical action, should not be animated by a meta-
physical (in the sense of otherworldly) desire, but should be a matter of
dharmic naturalness and »radical everydayness« (byojotei ljZ-~ /it).Ni-
shida derives the latter expression from Zen to convey the manner in
which the self »eschatologically« touches the absolute in each and every
mundane moment, including, of course, in each and every ethical act.99
In its own bottomless depths the self touches the absolute by way
of what Nishida calls »inverse correspondence« (gyakutaio itJt %),
that is to say, by way of the meeting of the finite self and the infinite
God or Buddha through their mutual self-negation. 100 Nishida writes,
»at the basis of the self there is that which thoroughly transcends the
self, and yet this is not something merely other than the self, something
outside the self«. 101 This immanent transcendence is evinced, for exam-
ple, by the call of conscience, of which Heidegger famously remarks,
»The call comes from me and yet over me [Der Ruf kommt aus mir
und doch uber mich]«. 102 In an analogous manner, Nishida says that
»conscience« is »something that transcends the self from within «. 103
Ultimately, to penetrate to the roots of this »contradictory self-identity«

96 Tel, 3/Tal, 33- 34.

97
NKZ I, 7:233.
98 NKZ I, 7:427.

99
NKZ I, 11:446-48.
100
NKZ I, 11: 396, 398, 425, 427, 430.
101
NKZ I, 11:418.
102
Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, 17 th ed. (Tiibingen: 1993), p. 275.
103 NKZ I, 11:412.

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 Ethical and Religious Alter ity: Nish ida after Levinas

of the finite and the infinite in the depths of oneself is what Nishida
understands to be the Zen experience of enlightenment or kensha. 104
Zen often speaks of this experience of awakening as a matter of »cutting
off and then coming back to life« (zetsugo-saiso iMf-flff!), that is, as a
»great death« (daishi Jc!E) that issues in a »great vitality« (daikatsu }c
75). In its bottomless depths the finite self encounters Buddha or God
both as the »absolute Other« or »absolute nothingness« that kills it and
as the »absolute self« or »Buddha-nature« that brings it back to life.
The true self dies and is reborn moment by moment, encounter by
encounter. By means of self-negat ion - i.e., the dropping off of the
body-mind, letting go of all the psycho-physical forms to which the self
attaches itself and by means of which it distinguishes and thus distances
itself from others - the true self dies, only to be reborn again through
the self-negation - i.e., the kenotic self-limitation as self-determination
- of the immanently transcendent absolute. And it is precisely in the
incessant revolution of this death and rebirth - in the turning of the
breath, so to speak, between self-negation and self-reaffirmation - that
the true self is open to others, open, that is, to other finite delimitations
of the infinite place of absolute nothingness, other singular forms of the
universal formlessness which engenders and embraces us all in a man-
ner that lets us be together in our differences. Such are the interpersonal
ethical implications of Nishida 's philosophy of religion.

8. Cultural and Religious Alterity: Openness to Other Ways

of Openness to Others

As we have seen, while Levinas contends that positing an immanent

commonality , a sameness in being, would do violence to the alterity of
the other, he also argues for the religious idea of a »human kinship«
based on the commonality of a transcendent Father.105 He suggests not
only that this idea of a »fraternal community« fosters a mutual (i.e., we
might say, symmetrically asymmetrical) respect for alterity, but also
that it conveys a sense of our shared humanity. Levinas even claims that
Biblical monotheism can be defined in terms of »the perhaps superna-
tural gift of seeing that one man is absolutely like [absolument sembl-

'"' NKZ I, 11:445- 46.

,as Tel, 189-90 /Tal, 214.

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Bret W. Davis

able] another man beneath the variety of historical traditions kept alive
in each case. It is a school of xenophilia and anti-racism«. 106
One might, however, hear the claim that »one man is absolute ly
like another man« rather as a striking statement of »homophilia« for
Levinas - the thinker of absolute alterity - to make . Levinas's religious
»humanism of the other man« indeed shares with secular humanisms
the affirmation of a human universality in rejection of all racisms and
other forms of oppressive discriminations against human particularity.
Yet we should not fail to note that the universality posited by Levinas is
itself based on a particular religious tradition. Citing a passage where
Levinas claims that »election« is »a universal moral category rather
than a historical fact to do with Israel«, 107 Hillary Putnam writes: »Here
and elsewhere, Levinas is universalizing Judaism«, which means that
»in essence, all human beings are Jews«. 108
Suspicions that, here as elsewhere, an idea of human equality is
grounded on cultural and religious inequality are confirmed by a num-
ber of Biblical-Eurocentric statements Levinas made, such as: »I often
say, although it is a dangerous thing to say publically, that humanity
consists of the Bible and the Greeks. All the rest can be translated: all the
rest - all the exotic - is dance.« 109 It may exacerbate more than mitigate
such outrageous claims when Levinas elsewhere confesses his ignorance
of other traditions, as for instance when he remarks: »For me, certainly,

1o,;DL, 232/DF, 178.

107 DL 39/DF 22.
108 Hillary Putnam, »Levinas and Judaism«, in: Simon Critchley and Robert Bernasconi

(eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Levinas (Cambridge: 2002), p. 34. Michael L. Mor-
gan writes that, for Levinas, »th e Jewish people is the soul of hum anity, and its essence is
universalism.[ ... ] All peoples are Jews, and all states Israel«. In a footnote he adds, »Here
I am alluding to a comment, frequently cited, of Bernard Malamud, that all people are
Jews, only they don't know it« (The Cambridg e Introduction to Emmanu al Levinas
[Cambridge: 2011], p. 236). While certainly preferable to exclusionary interpretations
of the idea of being a »chosen people«, such gestures of inclusivity are at best patron-
izing, and at worst imperialistic.
109 Raoul Mortley, French Philosophers in Conversation (London: 1991), p. 18. For a

similar statement made in another interview, see Robbins (ed.), Is It Right eous to Be?
Interviews with Emmanuel Levinas, p. 149. It is not difficult to surmise what Levinas's
response would be to Nishida's claim that, in contrast to the ancient Greek and modern
Western emphasis on human reason, and to the Judeo-Christia n emphasis on a transcen-
dent and personal God, Japanese culture is characterized by a this-worldly endeavor to
give »emotional« and »musical« expression to »the form of the formless« (NKZ I, 7:440-
53; NKZ I, 14:413).

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 Ethical and Religious Alterity: Nishida after Levinas

the Bible is the model of excellence; but I say that while knowing noth-
ing of Buddhism .« 110 In general we need to question the legitimacy of
setting up a part(cular religious and/or philosophical tradition - all too
predictably the tradition one happens to have been born and educated
into - as the universal model of excellence without knowing anything of
other traditions . We also need to question the conceit invo lved in claim-
ing the ability to translate - and thus assimilate into one's own linguis-
tic and cultural horizons of intelligibility - what one has not yet at-
tempted to understand on its own terms.
According to Levinas, »Morality does not belong to Culture: it
enables one to judge it«. 111 And yet, for Levinas, this morality that
transcends culture has been revealed only through Western culture ,
that is, only through the texts of Biblical religion and Greek philosophy.
The Platonism which would equate the ideas of a particular culture with
universal Ideas is said to have been »overcome with the very means
which the universal thought issued from Plato supplied. It is overcome
by this so much disparaged Western civilization, which was able«, ac-
cording to Levinas, who is here ironically mimicking Hegel, »to under-
stand the particular cultures, that never understood themselves « .112 The
particularity of other cultures can supposedly be understood only with-
in the horizon of the universality discovered by Europe. Is this not an-
other, merely sublated form of reducing the Other to the Same? Euro-
centrism can purportedly be overcome only by Europe itself, that is to
say, the imperialism of Western culture can purportedly be overcome
only by what Levinas calls »the generosity of Western t hough t«.11·1 Yet
this generosity apparently does not include an openness to the idea that

110
Entreti ens avec Le Monde. 1. Philosophies (Paris: 1984), p. 147, quoted in Robert
Bernasconi, »Who is my Neighbor? Who is the Other? Questioning ,The Generosity of
Western Thought <«, in: Claire Katz (ed.), Emmanuel Levina s: Critical Assessments of
Leading Philosophers (London and New York: 2005), vol. 4, p. 16. Bernasconi's article is
a judicious and insightful treatment of the problem of ethnocentrism in Levinas's
thought. This volume also includes a number of articles that critically address issues of
gender inequity in Levinas's conception of »fraternity« . For an argume nt that »the ex-
clusions chara cterizing Levinas' conception of divin ity point to a manner of thought and
assertion which, contrary to his own idea of justice, is not open to the saying of the
genuinely other«, see Sonia Sikka, »Questioning the Sacred: Heidegger and Levinas on
the Locus of Divinity «, in: ibid., vol. 3.
111
BPW, 57.
112
BPW,58.
m BPW, 58.

339
Bret W. Davis

other cultures may harbor alternative pathways to, and conceptions of,
a universal morality capable of judging, rather than simply reflecting,
particular cultural practices and beliefs.
In contrast to Levinas's inveterately Eurocentric approach to uni-
versalism, Nishida attempted to think cross-culturally. He learned Wes-
tern languages and read widely and deeply in Western philosophy and
religion, sympathetically allowing it to impact his thinking without
rushing to condemn it on the basis of his own Mahayana Buddhist or
Tapanese cultural and religious background. 114 Although he wrote his
first book in the wake of a decade of Zen practice, in it he refer s to
Tewish, Christian , Muslim, Hindu, Confucian, and Daoist sources just
as often as he does to Buddhist ones.115 Two decades later, as we have
seen, Nishida concludes his »I and Thou« essay by interpretively adopt-
ing the Christian idea of a fraternal community infused with the spirit
of »loving thy neighbor as thyself«. 116 Nevertheless, even while Nishida
here as elsewhere appropriates Biblical language and themes, at the
same time he carefully distinguishes his immanently transcendent and
kenotically panentheistic understanding of God as the creative force of
kenotic agape that works in and though history from a dualistic theism,
stating, »God must be entirely that which works from the base of our
selves. That which works from the outside is merely blind force. We see
transcendence at the base of our selves«. 117
Despite all his sympathies with Western philosophy and Biblical
religion, in the end Nishida confesses: »It is not that I conceived of my
way of thinking in dependence on Mahayana Buddhism; and yet it has
come into accord with it. «118 In the conclusion to his final essay on
religion 119 Nishida suggests that the religion of the future should be
that of a kenotically panentheistic »immanent transcendence« (such as
he finds most notably in Mahayana Buddhism) rather than that of a

114
I do n ot mean to suggest that Nish ida was immune from all ethnocent ric impulses.
For an examination of the amb ivalences in his cultural and politi cal thought in this re-
gard, see my »Toward a World of Worlds : Nishida, the Kyoto School, and the Place of
Cross -Cultural Dialogue« , in: James W. Heisig (ed.), Frontiers of Japanese Philosophy
(Nagoya: 2006).
115 Cf. e.g. NKZ I, 1:156, 168.
116
NKZ I, 6:427.
117
NKZ I, 6:425.
118
NKZ I, 14:408.
119 NKZ I, 11:460-63 .

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 Ethical and Religious Alte rity: Nis hida after Levinas

»transcendent immanence« (such as he finds most notably in Christi an-

ity), much less that of an external transcendenc e (such as he finds most
notably in Judaism ).
To be sure, we can and should cont inue to critically examine Nishi-
da's interpretations and evaluations of these tradition s, and to debate
whether or not his East Asian Mahayana Buddhist inspired philosophy
of religion provides a better context for thinking th e ethical relation
than does Levinas's Jewish inspi red thinking. At the very least, how-
ever, Nishida's cross-cultural and interreligious philosophy compels us
to take seriously something that Levinas did not: The alterit y of ways of
taking seriously the alterity of others .

341